New documentary offers deeper look at Danbury’s Marian Anderson
DANBURY — When Marian Anderson and her husband tried to buy a 50-acre property in Danbury, they were forced to purchase the other 50 acres adjacent to it.
The sellers had tried to stop the purchase after they learned Anderson, the famed contralto singer who performed across the world, was Black.
“The sellers were saying if we sell you the property then the property around that would have no real value,” says Samuel Hyman, the former president of the Danbury NAACP, in a new documentary about Anderson.
“She’s prominent, and she’s still viewed as a threat to the community because of her race,” he added in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.
Called “Marian Anderson: The Whole World in Her Hands,” the documentary includes “rare” archival footage and audio recordings of Anderson that offer a deeper look into her talent and achievements, as well as the racism she faced.
The documentary aired this past week on PBS in honor of Black History Month and Anderson’s upcoming 125th birthday on Feb. 27. It’s available to stream for free online through March 9.
It details her story from her birth in Philadelphia in 1897 — a year after Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine — to her concerts and travels across the globe, to her famous 1939 performance in front of the Lincoln Memorial, to her years in Danbury.
Director Rita Coburn said she combed through the University of Pennsylvania's Marian Anderson collection, which includes 4,000 photographs and 6,000 letters, some of which are read by reenactors in the film. The Danbury Museum and Historical Society contributed archival material, as well.
The documentary features archival interviews and 34 cassette tapes of interviews recorded in the 1950s, when she was preparing to write her memoir, “My Lord, What a Morning.”
“When I listened to them, I felt it was important for her to have more agency in the telling of her story,” said Coburn, who has also created a documentary about Maya Angelou.
In doing so, she drew attention to Black history in a format that best suits telling stories about the Black experience.
“Most of the time our history was left out of the books and was not taught mainstream,” said Coburn, a Black woman. “So in order to get to our history, you have to use the oral tradition, people tell you something. For us, more than some other races and ethnicities, not all, the history is best viewed through a person.”
The film relies on audio and video of her performances.
“The music that they used in the documentary was really beautiful and varied,” said Laura Flachbart, president of the Danbury Music Centre, where Anderson was a member and patron for decades. The centre’s recital hall is named after her, while the organization is having a portrait painted in her honor. “It really did show off that vocal range. I found myself being moved to tears several times during the documentary listening to her.”
Breaking color barriers
Anderson is best known for her groundbreaking performance on Easter Sunday 1939 at the Lincoln Memorial in front of an interracial crowd of 75,000, while millions listened on the radio. The Daughters of the American Revolution had prevented her from performing at Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin, so First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Howard University and the NAACP arranged for her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial instead.
But the documentary dives deeper into the racism she faced.
Anderson was acclaimed across the globe, performing for kings and queens, who “lavished her with praise,” according to one newspaper clipping shown in the film.
But when she returned to the United States, she was forced to sit in the back of the train car or eat her meals in her hotel room. She said she didn’t want to be “embarrassed” in the dining room. After being denied a room at a hotel in New Jersey in 1937, she stayed with Albert Einstein each time she visited the area.
“You cannot be expected to give as good a performance as you would hope to if your mind is on the fact that you are some place, but you're certainly are not wanted there,” Anderson says in one of the archival recordings. “And you're trying to sing to a group of people as if your heart is full of love and happiness, and it isn’t completely.”
In one of the archival materials that didn’t make the documentary, Anderson described needing to iron her dress in the alley outside of the hotel she stayed in the deep South, Coburn said. Through her “sheer will” and “entrepreneurial spirit,” Anderson found her agency in Jim Crow America, the director said.
“She could never be irrelevant as long as we are continuing to fight racism in areas of arts, areas of politics, and just day to day living,” Coburn said.
Anderson’s achievements include being the first Black soloist to sing in a leading role in New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1955, singing at the inaugurations for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy, and earning various awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. She served as a delegate to the United Nations, as well.
Her performance at the Lincoln Memorial, however, helped inspire the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech.
Anderson sang at the march, traveling to Washington, D.C. with a group from the Danbury NAACP including Hyman, he said.
Life in Danbury
It was a “blessing” that Anderson and her husband bought the property that became known as Marianna Farm on Joe’s Hill Road in Danbury, said Brigid Guertin, executive director of the Danbury Museum and Historical Society.
At home in Danbury with her husband Orpheus Fisher, Anderson liked to be known as Mrs. Fisher, Guertin said. She performed at local events such as high school graduations and served as narrator for Aaron Copland’s “A Lincoln Portrait” with the Danbury Symphony Orchestra for the city’s 1976 Bicentennial concert.
“She was inspiring on on a personal level and professional level,” Guertin said. “I think that's what makes her story resonate so much generation after generation because she managed to touch people in their hearts and their minds and to make such a profound impact because she was so personally accessible, at the same time as she was so professionally adored.”
Her husband served on the board of the NAACP in Danbury, and the two hosted fundraising events for the organization at their home, Hyman said. They attended New Hope Baptist Church in Danbury.
Danbury plans to create a mural in her honor downtown, while Western Connecticut State University is raising money to rename its School of Visual and Performing Arts after her.
The Danbury Museum and Historical Society is celebrating her birthday with “Marian Mondays,” where the organization shares Anderson photos and archival materials on social media, Guertin said. The museum, NAACP and library will host a Zoom program on her birthday, as well.